A very public broken promise

Published 5:55 pm, Saturday, August 12, 2017

To the editor:

Growing older I have learned there are many kinds of almost everything. There are many kinds of promises. I remember my cousin promised when he got home from Vietnam that he would get a truck and we would work on it together. He never came home. That was a broken promise, but I just hope he knows I would pass on a hundred trucks, just to go dove hunting with him one more time. I remember my sister, spoiled and adolescent, yelling, "but you promised" over and over at my father, an honest and principled man. I remember when the nurse put my child in my arms for the first time and my complete being made a deep promise to protect the child at all costs. One sunny afternoon years ago, I made a promise, "to have and to hold." That promise I made has been kept and I have a certain pride about that.

The Republicans made a promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. I know this promise stuff is complex, but I think they broke their promise. The thing is this was a promise made over and over in public for seven years. It is one of the cruel types of promise-breakings, in that they knew all along they were unprepared to keep the promise and many of them promised to repeal only to get something for themselves -- votes.

Promises kept and promises broken teach us. I know my cousin wanted to come home and my father wanted my sister to be happy and to grow up. When I made that deep promise to my infant, I started that very day to keep the promise. I am not sure I understood then what I was promising on that sunny afternoon, but I do now and have learned the great value of that promise.

Kept promises are sometimes rewarded and most often remembered by the promise keeper. Every day people forgive broken promises. However, it is true that a broken promise, particularly the cruel type, change feelings and relationships. I will not forgive or forget the Republicans' broken promise anytime soon.

Joe Clepp

Conroe

Brady "sneaking" around

To the editor:

Thanks to Dr. Debra Walters, we now know why U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady has been sneaking around House District 8. He is afraid of his constituency. He should be able to hire bodyguards with his millions of dollars of campaign funds from outside the district. Sad!